(Mars [Barsoom] series, #2)

1913

Tantor Media, 2001

John Carter returns to his beloved adopted planet of Mars, ten years after his unwilling exile to Earth. But his return to Mars is fraught with danger and adventure as he arrives in the Valley Dor—the Martian equivalent of Heaven. The Barsoomian heaven is no paradise. Savage blue plant men and beastly white apes are only the beginning as Carter battles to win free of the alien Eden and be reunited with his princess of the Red Martians, Dejah Thoris. Along the way he battles superstition and religious ignorance as he finds himself first among the White race, and then the long lost race of the First Born, the Black Martians.

Even should Carter and his companions win free, execution awaits them at the hands of Red and Green Martians - for it is a death sentence to return from the final journey down the River Iss to the Valley Dor. And Carter's great desire to reveal the falseness of the Martian Eden will surely proclaim him a blasphemer, also resulting in his death sentence.

I enjoyed this outing on Barsoom more than the first. Burroughs' plot—while still episodic and given to wild conveniences—is more focused. This tale also has very prominent themes of race and religion worked into its serial adventure nature. The White race keeps the Green and Red races in superstitious servitude, while proclaiming their own heaven and superiority—which, in turn, is revealed as false, too, at the hands of the Black Martians who manipulate the White Martians.

It is the bravery and Earthly manners of Carter, of course, that rally the Martian races to shed the heavy yoke of superstitious tradition. But it is not all about religious politics. There is plenty of action for Carter. Swords, daggers, gladiatorial combat, aerial and nautical navies, flight and pursuit, capture and prison escapes. There just isn't enough Carter to go around as three women declare their love for him and the mighty goddess Issus vows his destruction during the course of events.

To top it all off, The Gods of Mars ends on a prominent cliffhanger. Dejah Thoris is still in grave danger; Carter has not yet lifted the veil of superstition of the Red Martians; and the threat of civil war looms between the believers and the non-believing followers of Carter. Those aspects alone have me ready to read The Warlord of Mars, the third entry in the series, to learn what befalls the characters.

The audio aspect of this Tantor Media presentation is a far sight better than the Blackstone Audio version of A Princess of Mars (link to review below.) John Bolen does a decent job of bringing the characters to life and reading with energy. The only quirk I found was that Bolen chose to read the entire narrative in a forced Virginian accent. Technically, he is correct. John Carter hails from Virginia and the tale is told in first-person narrative. But I would have expected a more neutral accent for the narrative of the tale, with the accent reserved for Carter's dialog. After all, Carter might hail from Virginia, but he is also an immortal that cannot remember a childhood, and stays young as young men grow old. He might have come from anywhere.

All in all though, it's a good presentation and my media of choice for the next novel in the series will be Tantor Media's audio-book format.

Note: Audio-books can be expensive, to be sure. I have been borrowing these audio-books from my local library. If you're interested, check out your local library. If they don't have the book, chances are that they belong to a consortium of libraries and can acquire it for you on loan from another location.